By Pradeep Thakur
In what is considered as another big diplomatic initiative, the government has come up with a road map for the establishment of a global coalition on disaster risk reduction (DRR) and has already allocated some seed funding for it. This will be second big coalition floated by India outside the UN after the Solar Alliance of 121 countries.
“The road map encompasses four verticals: risk assessment for infrastructure; improvements in standards and regulation for infrastructure sectors; role of finance in promoting disaster resilience of infrastructure; and mechanisms for supporting recovery in infrastructure,” said PK Mishra, additional principal secretary to the Prime Minister Narendra Modi.
Mishra told TOI that the coalition will support collaborative research, knowledge sharing as well as mutual technical assistance among coalition partners along these four areas.
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“The coalition will focus specifically on disaster resilience of major infrastructure. Recent episodes of damage to major infrastructure – damage to water supply infrastructure in Osaka earthquake in Japan in June, major bridge collapse in Italy, damage to Kochi airport in Kerala – have highlighted the importance of this area of work. We need to work with other countries,” Mishra said.
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